Healing the Republic

Healing the Republic

Author: Joan Burbick

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-08-26

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9780521454346

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In this study Joan Burbick interprets nineteenth-century narratives of health written by physicians, social reformers, lay healers, and literary artists in order to expose the conflicts underlying the creation of a national culture in America. These "fictions" of health include annual reports of mental asylums, home physician manuals, social reform books, and novels consumed by the middle class that functioned as cautionary tales of well-being. Read together these writings engage in a counterpoint of voices at once constructing and debating the hegemonic values of the emerging American nation. That political values flow from the daily exigencies of survival and enjoyment is one of the claims advanced by theorists of cultural hegemony. Broadening this assumption, the narratives of health presented here address the demands and desires of everyday life and construct a national discourse with directives on control, authority, and subordination. They articulate the wish for a healthy citizenry, freed of pain and saturated with well-being, and they insist upon specific ideologies and knowledges of the body in order to achieve this radiance of health. Divided into two parts, the work first examines the structures of authority found in health narratives and then studies the topology of the body found in a cross section of writings. The first part examines how the authority of "common sense" is pitted against that of physiological law and its transcendent "constitution" for the body. The second analyzes how specific knowledges about the brain, heart, nerves, and eye provide individual "keys" to health, indices that reveal the conflicts inherent in American nationalism. In studying thesenarratives of health, Healing the Republic confronts what Burbick sees as a certain fundamental uneasiness about democracy in America. Fearing the political freedom they hoped to embrace. Americans designed ways to control the body in the effort to create, impose, or encompass social order in a corporeal politics whose influences are felt to this day.


Venomous encounters

Venomous encounters

Author: Peter Hobbins

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2017-02-13

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1526106280

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How do we know which snakes are dangerous? This seemingly simple question caused constant concern for the white settlers who colonised Australia after 1788. Facing a multitude of serpents in the bush, their fields and their homes, colonists wanted to know which were the harmful species and what to do when bitten. But who could provide this expertise? Liberally illustrated with period images, Venomous Encounters argues that much of the knowledge about which snakes were deadly was created by observing snakebite in domesticated creatures, from dogs to cattle. Originally accidental, by the middle of the nineteenth century this process became deliberate. Doctors, naturalists and amateur antidote sellers all caused snakes to bite familiar creatures in order to demonstrate the effects of venom - and the often erratic impact of 'cures'. In exploring this culture of colonial vivisection, Venomous Encounters asks fundamental questions about human-animal relationships and the nature of modern medicine.


Bradykinin, Kallidin and Kallikrein

Bradykinin, Kallidin and Kallikrein

Author: Ervin G. Erdös

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-27

Total Pages: 787

ISBN-13: 3642462227

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Bradykinin is frequently referred to as an elusive substance; the editor of a comprehensive volume dealing with kinins thus has a difficult task. The com plexity of the issues calls for a large number of contributors who approach the topics from the various angles that are dictated by the sometimes divergent views of the individuals. The editor saw no reason to prescribe the mode of presentation, which was left to the authors and accounts for the variety of approaches. Contributors from nine countries were asked to participate in the volume. The chapters were organized to present, first, the history of the discoveries and methods of approach to kinin research. Then follows a discussion of the enzymes that release kinins, their substrates, and other enzymes that inactivate the peptides. If the release of kinin is important, then the inhibition of the releasing enzymes is of obvious interest and is described. Since the measurement of kinin ogen levels in blood has been frequently used as an indicator of kinin liberation, in addition to a separate chapter, kininogens are also mentioned where the functions of kinins are discussed. The conclusions drawn from establishing structure-action relationships for many analogs and the actions of kinins are indicated and summarized.